Wikipedia Cornucopia

You wait ages for a bus, and then three arrive at once. And so it seems for articles on Wikipedia. After I commended the piece in The New Yorker yesterday, here's an even better one in The Atlantic - home of the original "Memex" article by Vannevar Bush, which prefigured so much of the Web and Wikipedia.

The Atlantic's piece is particularly good on the origins and history of Wikipedia. Indeed, I had vaguely contemplated writing a book about Wikipedia and related open content projects to go alongside Rebel Code and Digital Code of Life, but there doesn't seem much point now with all this material available online.

And I liked this meditation on how Wikipedia functions:

Wikipedia suggests a different theory of truth. Just think about the way we learn what words mean. Generally speaking, we do so by listening to other people (our parents, first). Since we want to communicate with them (after all, they feed us), we use the words in the same way they do. Wikipedia says judgments of truth and falsehood work the same way. The community decides that two plus two equals four the same way it decides what an apple is: by consensus. Yes, that means that if the community changes its mind and decides that two plus two equals five, then two plus two does equal five. The community isn’t likely to do such an absurd or useless thing, but it has the ability.

It also quotes the following striking idea:

[I]n June 2001, only six months after Wikipedia was founded, a Polish Wikipedian named Krzysztof Jasiutowicz made an arresting and remarkably forward-looking observation. The Internet, he mused, was nothing but a "global Wikipedia without the end-user editing facility."

Now there's a thought.

Open Geodata Made Easy

If you've ever wondered what open geodata is and what it has to do with the other opens, try this introduction to the field. Along the way it mentions something called FLOSS Foundations, which I'd never heard of. Despite its name, it's not an organisation for dentists.

Foxed by Foxmarks

Mitch Kapor, he of software archaeology fame, has started a project called Foxmarks. According to the FAQ:

Foxmarks is an extension for Firefox that allows you to synchronize your bookmarks across multiple computers. Install Foxmarks on each machine that you want to keep synchronized, and Foxmarks will automatically propagate bookmarks changes that you make on one machine to all the others.

Hm: isn't this what Google Browser Sync does? And then some:

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

But wait, Mitch says there's more:

I’m incubating a new startup, which is pretty exciting because we’re working on innovation at the intersection of search and social production. Think of new services which are a cross between Google and the Wikipedia.

BTW, Mitch, how is Chandler coming along? (Via C|net.)

Bio::Blogs #2...

...is now online. Not that I'm represented there or anything, oh my word, no. Well, only a bit. You might want to visit it anyway, since it comes all the way from sunny Brisbane.

The Quiet Revolution

One of the extraordinary things about Firefox is that its impact just keeps growing: the 200 million download mark has now been passed. Of course, this doesn't mean 200 million users, but the market share is also going up respectably.

This is all quite amazing - particularly because nobody seems to think it's amazing anymore. We expect it from Firefox, and that's good, because it helps seed the idea that open source in general should be aiming this high.

It's the Metric, Stupid

A great post by Stephen O'Grady pondering the likelihood or otherwise of billion-dollar open source companies appearing anytime soon. It contains a number of wise comments that make it well worth reading. For example:

So you look a little deeper and see that while open source might not (yet) create immense, monolithic wealth, it does benefit customers by lowering pricing and increasing choice. Further, it seems illogical to believe that even if open source can lower certain software acqusition and operating costs, those dollar savings are not invested elsewhere. How many CIOs will go their board and say "I invested in Linux, JBoss, & MySQL and saved us x dollars - please lower my budget accordingly"? You might also see that open source allows vendors to ammortize a number of traditional development, quality assurance and marketing costs, across a wide pool of volunteer resources, lowering the dollars they need to operate (you should hear Alfresco's Kevin Cochrane talk about the delta in saleperson costs - it's eye opening).

Quite. But I would go much further.

The reason we will probably never see a billion-dollar open source company is the fact that turnover is the wrong metric to focus on for such entities. Looking purely at income misses out on all the other kinds of value that are involved - for example, all the software that is downloaded and used by people who aren't paying customers. It excludes the value added to the open source ecosystem in terms of helping other free software projects, either directly through code re-use, or indirectly by promoting the overall concept.

These are all things that open source companies do routinely, and yet they receive next to no credit for it - financial or otherwise. It's part of a wider problem with current economics analyses that also typically don't take into account factors like environmental damage when estimating costs of production.

And at a deeper level still, there is something that O'Grady himself touches on:

Open source in many respects seems to underpin a future in which more people will make less, rather than less people making more. I know which I'd pick.

Focussing only on the money involved completely overlooks other crucial elements of free software: the social and ethical aspects. It's good to see that O'Grady is one of the people who gets this.

Update: Apparently, Matt Asay disagrees with O'Grady (and hence me).

Lies, Damned Lies and Baltimore Sun Op-Eds

This op-ed on net neutrality in the Baltimore Sun is extraordinary:

The "neutral" proposal that companies like Google are touting will ensure that they never have to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use, and consumers who may only use their computers to send e-mail and play Solitaire get to foot the bill.

Er, that is, companies like Google never have to pay a dime apart from the millions of dollars in connection fees that they cough up each year? Well, that's an interesting use of the word "never", as in "always".

I'd like to put this statement down to sheer stupidity, but, alas, I fear that it may be due to the fact that the authors are co-chairs of the "Hands Off the Internet" pressure group, which, by an amazing coincidence just happens to be funded by the big telco companies who are trying to kill net neutrality.

Pathetic. (Via TechDirt.)

We Are All Great Communicators Now

Tom Foremski has a thought-provoking post about the Internet's disruptive effects. More specifically, he asks: Where are they? His answer - that the real disruption is happening in the media sector - is a good one, but incomplete, I think.

He rightly observes that

every company is a media company to a greater or lesser degree. Because every company tells stories, it publishes to its customers, to its staff, to its new hires. We now have two-way media technologies and those that can adapt and master those technologies, and become technology-enabled media companies, will survive.

But this is not about publishing, which is essentially unidirectional (however much it may pay lip-service to the idea of listening to readers): it is about communication, which is truly two-way. And that is the key, disruptive effect of the Internet: it is forcing all companies to communicate with their customers - to speak and to listen - not just publish to them.

That is why so-called social networking lies at the heart of Web 2.0 technologies, and why integrating such egalitarian principles into their business is going to be so hard for most companies, given their natural penchant for a more seigneurial command and control approach.

The Politics of Knowledge and the Online Republic

Digital Universe's Larry Sanger has posted another of his thoughtful essays, this time on the central issue of the "politics of knowledge":

[T]he main arena of the new politics of knowledge is project governance. Wikipedia is famously unaccommodating of the usual privileges of experts; there is no special place them in Wikipedia-land. You might arrive at Slashdot possessed of the finest-tuned understanding of tech news, but when you join in making and rating comments, you become just another rank-and-file member until, perhaps, you prove yourself by the lights of Slashdot (which might or might not correspond to anything deserving the name “expertise”). On Digg, your vote counts the same as everybody else’s. And so forth.

So radical egalitarianism is built into the governance models of many collaborative projects. When, therefore, the Creative Public votes with their feet for Web 2.0 resources that reject the need of editors, such as Wikipedia, Digg, and MySpace (again, the latter may not be collaborative, but it’s definitely editor-free), they are thereby denying epistemic authority to the people who otherwise would be their editors.

Along the way, he introduces the idea of the "online republic":

Let me explain rather better what I mean by an “online Republic,” and then why I think that it is the only system that will have desirable epistemic consequences, in the long run. Bear in mind first that Republics have a definite democratic aspect, since power and authority in the project in actual practice (not just in the PR material) must emanate from the participants–not from the website owners. But not just anyone can count as a participant for voting purposes. Insofar as we are talking about an online polity that is shaped not by just anyone’s arbitrary whim but by “law,” there must be a process whereby someone becomes a member of the community and thus subject to its “laws.” In practical terms, this means no doubt that “full citizenship” must be earned through participation and through a declaration not to undermine at least the fundamental laws of the polity (i.e., engage in “insurrection”). The “fundamental laws” are essentially a community charter, which is carefully written, carefully interpreted, and, once established, very hard to change. The rule of law arguably requires a robust, well-respected constitution: if laws are very easy to change, legislators and judges can, with a flick of the pen, change the entire system into something else entirely. Finally, a Republic requires the free election of representatives, the basic qualifications of which (if any) are described by the charter, who both make and enforce the rules of the project.

His essay also has some handy links to other relevant materials, including this New Yorker feature on Wikipedia, currently the best overall introduction to the project and its history.

A Noteworthy Addition: Lotus Notes for GNU/Linux

For some, the words "Lotus Notes" are enough to strike fear into the heart. But for younger readers, that resonance is probably absent, and so the importance of the recent port of the Lotus Notes client to GNU/Linux is probably lost.

In a sense, Lotus Notes for GNU/Linux is noteworthy precisely because the program is the epitome of corporate computing, with all that this implies. Its appearance is further proof that GNU/Linux has arrived. It also removes yet another obstacle to adopting free software in a business context for some 120 million people currently using the program on other platforms - whether willingly or not.

UK PubMed Central: Good News, Bad News?

The US PubMed Central service has become one of the cornerstones of biomedical research, and a major milestone on the way towards full open access to all scientific knowledge.

Just as the world's central genomic database GenBank exists in three global zones - the US, Europe and Japan - so the natural step would be to roll out PubMed Central as an international service. The first move towards that has now been made with the announcement that a consortium of UK institutions has been chosen to set up UK PubMed Central (UKPMC). That's the good news. The bad news - maybe - is that one of them is the British Library.

Why is that bad news, since the British Library is one of the pre-eminent libraries in the world? Well, that may be so, but it is also deeply involved with Microsoft's Open XML, the rival to OpenDocument Format; Microsoft is trying to push Open XML through a standardisation process to match ODF's full ISO status. It is particularly regrettable that the British Library is bolstering this pseudo-standard with its support, rather than wholeheartedly backing ODF, a totally open, vendor-independent standard, and this could be real problem because of the British Library's role in the UKPMC consortium:

In the initial stages of the UKPMC programme, the British Library will lead on setting up the service, developing the process for handling author submissions and marketing the resource to the research community.

It's the "handling authors submissions" that could be bad news: if, for example, the British Library gave any preference for submissions be made in Microsoft's XML format formats, it would be a huge step back for openness. The US PubMed Central does the Right Thing, and takes submissions in either XML or SGML. Let's hope the UK PubMed Central follows suit and goes for a neutral submissions policy. (Via Open Access News.)

Moguls of New Media, Moguls of Old Media

The Wall Street Journal has a nice piece about what it calls the "moguls of new media":

As videos, blogs and Web pages created by amateurs remake the entertainment landscape, unknown directors, writers and producers are being catapulted into positions of enormous influence. Each week, about a half-million people download a comedic video podcast featuring a former paralegal. A video by a 30-year-old comedian from Cleveland has now been watched by almost 30 million people, roughly the audience for an average "American Idol" episode. The most popular contributor to the photo site Flickr.com just got a contract to shoot a Toyota ad campaign.

What I like about this WSJ feature is that it shows clearly the difference between the new media it celebrates and the old media it represents. The WSJ piece is well written, well edited and full of well-researched facts. Rather unlike new media, which tends to be scrappy and light on substance. But then, that's its charm, just as the reason the WSJ will always have a role, even when new media becomes even more pervasive and even more successful, is because it will never be any of these things. (Via Slashdot.)

CNN's Citizen Media is the Message

The news that CNN is now soliciting user-generated stories and content - rather as the BBC has been doing for a while - is important not so much for what will result, but for the message it sends. Even if the user-generated content turns out to be nugatory, the fact that CNN is jumping on this bandwagon gives the latter more impetus, which can't be a bad thing in terms of re-inventing media.

Brazil: Next to Go Nuts for ODF?

Judging by this article, Brazil's federal government may well be the next to adopt ODF as its official standard. As the news item notes, adopting open source is all very well, but if your documents are still locked into proprietary formats like Microsoft Office, you're only half-done.

The great thing about these announcements is that there's a positive feedback loop: the more that are made, the more other governments feel safe in following suit, which boosts the process even more. (Via Erwin's StarOffice Tango.)

Gold Digg-ing

The news that someone is offering their Digg profile on eBay is hardly a surprise in these days when people will try to sell anything there; but it's nonetheless significant. Digg is one of the leading Web 2.0 sites, and a leading exponent of the power of social networks. What can be done with Digg can be applied elsewhere.

This will lead to a de-coupling between the person who creates the online account in these networks and the account itself, which can be sold to and used by others. Which raises the question: wherein lies the value of that account? If the person who created it - and whose social "value" it reflects - moves on, what then of that value? In effect, the account becomes more of a brand, with certain assumed properties that can be lost as easily as they were gained if the new owner fails to maintain them.

Microsoft Patents Free Software

OK, so it's the idea of free computing that Microsoft is trying to patent, rather than just free software. It's still doubly stupid. Stupid, because this is obvious, and hence non-patentable. Stupid, because it's not even novel (and hence non-patentable): it was tried during Dotcom 1.0, where it failed miserably. Make that triply stupid.

Open Source, At Your Service

So far, the best answer to How can open source companies make money? seems to be that of providing services - typically training, support and general consultancy. There's another approach, involving dual licensing, but this is more problematic in some ways, and there's also evidence that it may only be a transitional approach on the way to a full service model.

Against this background, Irving Wladawsky-Berger has an interesting post on his blog about services, beginning with this observation:

If you look at IBM's business last year, services revenues were roughly 55%, while systems (hardware) and software revenues were around 25% and 20% respectively. But services constituted around one-third of the company's profit, for a very simple reason. Systems and software products leverage technology assets and apply engineering principles to improve quality, scale-up capacity, and achieve higher productivity and profit margins. Services, on the other hand, have historically been significantly more labor-based, less prone to economies of scale, subject to higher quality variations, and generally less productive and profitable.

Services - and analyses of them - will clearly be moving to the foreground in years to come, and not just in open source. The latter will, however, be a trailblazer in this respect as in many others. Another reason for those outside the world of free software to pay close attention to it.

Going the Extremadura Mile

Many in the world of free software are aware that the Spanish region of Extremadura has been installing GNU/Linux in its schools. It has even created its own distribution called GNU/Linex. This project began many years ago - the roots go back to 1998 - and most people probably assumed it had all fizzled out.

Far from it. For the Extramadura government has now announced that it would be going even further:

All the computers of the Junta of Extremadura (goverment state of Spain) will be running free software within a year. This project makes the Regional Government the first Public Administration to adopt standards upheld by international organizations, that favour "technological innovation and the reduction of user dependency.

The councillor for Infrastructures and Technological Development, Luis Millán de Vázquez de Miguel, met the press this Friday to inform about the agreements reached in the last board meeting of the Government held last June 25. In said meeting, it was agreed that all the computers of the Junta of Extremadura would have to be adapted to free software office tools and gnuLinEx (the local flavour of Debian GNU/Linux) within one year.

Thus, as from now on, all workers of the public administration must use open document formats (ISO/IEC DIS 26300) for their office applications for information and creating administrative processes, as well as PDF/A (Portable Document Format ISO 19005-1:2005) for Exchange Documents, when guaranteed unalterable visualization is required.

That is open source, and OpenDocument too.

But what's most interesting about this announcement is that it shows how mighty oaks can grow from small acorns: once organisations have tried free software and discovered how good it is, it becomes much easier to move on to larger-scale implementations. This, in its turn, shows that every open source project, now matter how small, is important.

Microsoft: Yes, We're Really Scared

It is a truism that if you believe in your product you welcome comparisons with the competition. After all, if you really are the best, you can only gain from that fact being made manifest.

So this delightful tale from PC Pro suggests that even Microsoft has no faith in its own products:

There can be no doubt that Microsoft is afraid of the open-source movement. Last month, as part of the conditions for allowing us to include Office 2007 on the cover disc, Microsoft Corp - in many ways a company distinct from the far cuddlier and more approachable Microsoft UK - wouldn't allow us to put any open-source software onto the same disc.

...

Microsoft specifically named OpenOffice.org as a program we couldn't include on the cover disc. That's an incredibly short-sighted move. The whole point about Office 2007 is what it offers over and above OpenOffice.org, that it allows you to create more sophisticated documents more quickly. If I was on the board of Microsoft Corp, I'd be demanding that magazines bundled both side by side so that people could make their own comparisons.

Obviously, the powers in Microsoft Towers aren't quite so confident of what the outcome might be. (Via SunMink.)

Time to Get Political: Top Down, Bottom Up

A couple of weeks back I wrote a piece for Linux Journal suggesting that top coders might start using some of their increasing influence outside computing to start talking directly with those in power in an attempt to change political agendas directly.

Now here's an interesting complementary suggestion: that supporters of free software should become consumer activists, and try to influence things from the bottom up.

Open Source Evo-Devo

In the early days of free software in business - say ten years ago - there was a natural tendency to think of it as a monolithic entity. But rather as chromatography can be used to separate out the constituent parts of an apparently uniform blob, so time gradually teases out the different elements that go to make up the rich and complex world of open source.

Thus we have projects like Apache and GNU/Linux, which are so much a part the mainstream now that it probably hard for most people to imagine that they were never part of it. Then there are the projects like MySQL and JBoss that are fast establishing themselves as second-generation leaders. Finally there is the new wave - the SugarCRMs, the JasperSofts and Alfrescos - that are coming through fast.

I found a nice representation of this evo-devo in a post on Matt Asay's blog, where it is attributed to Robin Vasan. I'm afraid I've never heard of him (I obviously lead a sheltered life), but I see from his bio that he's involved with Alfresco, as Matt is, so this is obviously the connection.

Aside from the graphic - which diverges in detail from my view of things, but is broadly the same - Matt's post contains several other interesting slides (and ideas) from his recent presentation at OSCON 2006. It's well worth taking a look at.

Of Metaweblogs and Pigritude

So Federated Media (John Battelle's new gig) has "launched a parenting “metaweblog” (at www.federatedmedia.net/parenting) that highlights the talented voices of the authors in its new Parenting federation."

The metaweblog - basically an aggregation of blog feeds on a given subject - is an inevitable development for blogs as they enter the mainstream. After all, it is hard work going out and finding all the blogs that interest you on a given subject: much easier to subscribe to one handy metaweblog feed and be done with it.

I mean, I ask you: next thing, they'll be asking us to think about what we read.

Aptana: Apt for Success?

The line-up of cross-platform open source apps is pretty impressive, except in one area: Web design. Until now, all we've really had is Nvu, which is certainly very easy to use, but rather limited in terms of more advanced features.

But now here's Aptana, a "robust, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications". It's still early days yet, but judging by the screenshots, it looks promising. (Via Digg).

The Blue Frog Takes the King's Shilling

I've an article over on Linux Journal that looks at dual licensing. The issue of how you might make money out of open source software is important, not just to the coders but also to the users. If the former don't feel that they've received enough payback - of whatever kind - they are likely to move on, and the latter will then suffer.

So I was interested to see the news that everybody's favourite blue frog - Azureus - has taken some venture capital money to turn "legit", or at least corporate. There's no reason why this should have any downside for the free version: presumably they aim to produce paid-for, customised versions for content producers etc. In fact, it might even help educate the latter that BitTorrent is not synonymous with evil.

The French Disease

For a nation of rationalists, France's DADVSI law is a seriously irrational piece of legislation that guts not just fair use, but comprehensively clobbers free software. Read this explanation - and then weep. (via Boing Boing.)